Each antenna in a base station (e.g., a communication cell tower, or any form of communication link) has associated with it a radio frequency (RF) transmission chain and a RF receive chain, referred to as a data receiver. There is most commonly an additional receiver, referred to as an observation receiver, which monitors the output of the power amplifier in the transmission chain. The data from the observation receiver is returned to a digital front-end (DFE) processor, where it is used in a digital pre-distorter (DPD) that linearizes the power amplifier. The DPD inversely models the power amplifier's gain and phase characteristics and, when combined with the amplifier, produces an overall system that is more linear and reduces the power amplifier's distortion. In short, then, each antenna is serviced by one transmission path and two receive paths. However, in the increasingly common time division duplexing (TDD) protocols that are used in, for example, long term evolution (LTE) wireless systems, there are periods of time in which a data path receiver is not engaged and remains idle. One or more embodiments described herein allow a reduction in the cost of a RF shelf by time-sharing a single receiver between the functions of the data receiver and the observation path receiver.